Abstract
Emotional mimicry and empathy are mechanisms underlying social interaction. Benzodiazepines have been proposed to inhibit empathy and promote antisocial behaviour. First, we aimed to investigate the effects of oxazepam on emotional mimicry and empathy for pain, and second, we aimed to investigate the association of personality traits to emotional mimicry and empathy. Participants (n=76) were randomized to 25 mg oxazepam or placebo. Emotional mimicry was examined using video clips with emotional expressions. Empathy was investigated by pain stimulating the participant and a confederate. We recorded self-rated experience, activity in major zygomatic and superciliary corrugator muscles, skin conductance, and heart rate. In the mimicry experiment, oxazepam inhibited corrugator activity. In the empathy experiment, oxazepam caused increased self-rated unpleasantness and skin conductance. However, oxazepam specifically inhibited neither emotional mimicry nor empathy for pain. Responses in both experiments were associated with self-rated empathic, psychopathic and alexithymic traits. The present results do not support a specific effect of 25 mg oxazepam on emotional mimicry or empathy.
Highlights
In wave 1, two participants were excluded for technical reasons and one owing to facial tics, and in wave 2, one participant was excluded owing to facial tics
For empathy for pain, two participants were excluded from wave 1 after debriefing because it emerged that they had not understood the instructions, one participant was excluded owing to problems with the recording equipment, and a further three were excluded because they voiced suspicions about the nature of the confederate at debriefing
The facilitating effect of benzodiazepines on aggression seems to be potentiated by alcohol in real life and in the laboratory [24,86], whereas we have studied the 16 effect of oxazepam in isolation, and not attempted to induce aggressive behaviour
Summary
The study was a double-blind randomized controlled experiment performed in two waves. We investigated the effect of oxazepam on three different emotional processes: empathy for pain, emotional mimicry and emotion regulation by cognitive reappraisal. This paper describes the experiments on mimicry and empathy for pain. The reappraisal experiment will be reported elsewhere. In wave 2, timing of stimulus presentation was revised and heart rate was added as an outcome measure (see below)
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